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San Francisco, May 17, 2012Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSELB) today announced the ability for studios, authoring houses, and mastering facilities to unlock the full sonic potential of television, movie, and music content, further elevating playback performance of lossless audio on Blu-ray Disc.

Blu-ray Discs premastered using Dolby® TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling can now deliver to consumers a full-range high-definition surround sound experience ensuring optimum performance from today's advanced A/V receivers and Blu-ray Disc players. The new Dolby TrueHD coding solution enables facilities to integrate the benefits of 96 kHz playback quality audio into the final master while simultaneously reducing the incidence of digital artifacts introduced during the content-creation process.

Lossless audio is a key distinguishing feature of Blu-ray content. All things being equal, you cannot improve on the quality of lossless audio coding; however, you can improve on the quality of the source PCM content prior to lossless encoding, and this is precisely what we have achieved with our advanced 96k upsampling technology, said Craig Eggers, Director, Content Creation and Playback, Home Theater Ecosystem, Dolby Laboratories. A significant amount of Hollywood content has been captured in native48 kHz. Studios and authoring facilities that implement Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling can elevate the quality of PCM audio prior to lossless Dolby TrueHD encoding, ensuring that consumers get the very best audio performance possible from their Blu-ray playback systems.

Besides enabling optimum 96k upsampling, this technology features a unique apodizing filter that masks the unwanted digital artifacts known as preringing, which is introduced during the content-capture and content-creation process. These digital artifacts can introduce an unnatural edginess or harshness to the audio. Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling restores the natural tonality of the soundtrack. The effect can be subtle or dramatic, depending on the quality of the source material. Content mastered with Dolby TrueHD with advanced upsampling is fully playback compatible with all Dolby TrueHD enabled Blu-ray players and A/V receivers. Listeners are assured the highest-quality playback experiences possible through their systems.

Deluxe Digital Studios recently installed Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling after we conducted a blind test, and everyone agreed the upsampled stream was better than the original, said Roger Fiets, Technical Manager, DVD and Blu-ray Audio, Deluxe Digital Studios. With the advanced 96k upsampling treatment, the sound was clearer and is especially advantageous for titles that have levels ranging close to 0dBFS, delivering less fatigue for the listener.

We were particularly impressed with the excellent results of Dolby's new Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling on one of our most recent projects, the San Francisco Symphony at 100 Blu-ray, said Luke Fazzary, Director of Operations, Giant Interactive. We're very pleased to be able to share the benefits of this technology with our clients and plan to use it on future projects, whether concerts, live-action films, or episodic programming.

One of the best features in Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling is the apodizing filter, which makes remarkable improvement in the articulation in high-frequency attacks while simultaneously cleaning up midrange mush, said Brant Biles, President and Chief Engineer, Mi Casa Multimedia. Upsampling with the apodizing filter on any program information, whether it is music, dialogue, or effects, delicately unveils the sound and adds an extra dimension of depth and clarity. Job well done, Dolby!

I am very impressed with Dolby TrueHD advanced 96k upsampling as it definitely makes a difference with some of the transient elements of the audio mix, said Tim Hoogenakker, Senior Mixer, POP Sound. For example, when I used the advanced 96k upsampling on a portion of a film that I mixed recently, I noticed the cannon shots had a sharp transient quality that blended well with the loud crack and thump of the cannon fire that provided much more depth at 96k.

As a pioneer on the premastering of Blu-ray Disc in Greater China, Best & Original constantly seeks for innovative technologies that help us better maintain the artistic intent of the content and bring the home theater viewing experience to a higher level, said Michael Lau, Production Director, Best & Original Production Limited. Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling definitely is one of the best from this perspective, and we are delighted to be the one of the first production houses in the region to use this solution with the latest Chinese blockbuster Blu-ray release, The Flowers of War.

As one of the top studios in the region, Media Asia's mission is to offer the best possible entertainment experience for people in the cinema and at home. The capability of Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling delivers superior audio that fulfills our needs, said Ricky Tse, General Manager, Sales & Distribution, Media Asia Films. We are planning to use Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling in the Blu-ray version of a series of movies set to be released in this calendar year.

Dolby plays a critical role in ensuring that the artistic intent of the audio mix is maintained through the entertainment ecosystem, from the soundstage into the home theater. Dolby TrueHD delivers powerful sound that is bit-for-bit identical to the original studio master, unlocking the full entertainment value of Blu-ray Disc and other HD media. The advanced 96k upsampling raises the bar for playback of movies, television, and concert films mastered for Blu-ray Disc. Beyond the Greater China release of The Flowers of War, Blu-ray Disc titles including the Joe Satriani concert film, Satchurated: Live in Montreal, and San Francisco Symphony at 100 have been premastered using Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling.

To learn more about the use of Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling used in the San Francisco Symphony at 100 Blu-ray Disc release, visit https://vimeo.com/42325868.

Hear director and producer François Lamoureux and drummer Jeff Campitelli give insight into the making of the Joe Satriani concert film Satchurated: Live in Montreal now available in Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling, http://vimeo.com/42316824.

Studio staff and others interested in learning more about Dolby TrueHD with advanced 96k upsampling can read the following PDF white papers: Dolby TrueHD Encoder with Advanced 96k Upsampling and Elevating the Performance of Lossless Audio in the Home Theater: Dolby TrueHD with Advanced 96k Upsampling.

About Dolby TrueHD
Dolby TrueHD is a 100 percent lossless audio coding technology that reproduces movie and music playback in the home that is identical to the studio master. Supporting up to 7.1-channel playback of 96 kHz/24-bit audio on Blu-ray Disc, Dolby TrueHD reproduces powerful special effects and enables you to hear every dialogue track and musical note in rich detail. Listeners are transported right into the middle of the action in a movie, and to the best seat in the house for a concert event.

About Dolby Laboratories
Dolby Laboratories (NYSE: DLB) is the global leader in technologies that are essential elements in the best entertainment experiences. Founded in 1965 and best known for high-quality audio and surround sound, Dolby creates innovations that enrich entertainment at the movies, at home, or on the go. For more information about Dolby Laboratories or Dolby technologies, please visit www.dolby.com.

David BottFounder - AVSForum

DISCLAIMER:All spelling and grammatical errors done on purpose for the proofreadingly challenged...:)

In fact many concert blu rays already have 96KHz lossless audio, and even some audio blu rays have 192 KHz. The Akira blu ray disc, a very rare theatrical movie, contains a 192KHz Japanese Dolby trueHD track on blu ray, based on the analog track that puts even modern blockbuster soundtracks to shame.

In fact many concert blu rays already have 96KHz lossless audio, and even some audio blu rays have 192 KHz. The Akira blu ray disc, a very rare theatrical movie, contains a 192KHz Japanese Dolby trueHD track on blu ray, based on the analog track that puts even modern blockbuster soundtracks to shame.

The Joe Satriani Satchurated Blu-Ray has really great audio. Here is a portion of my review...

The audio choices are as follows: PCM 24Bit/48KHz Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround and Dolby True HD 7.1 24Bit/96KHz Surround. I listened to the Dolby TrueHD 7.1 on my 5.1 setup with some nice high-end Monitor Audio Gold GX speakers. Jeff Campitelli's drums in particular are very well recorded with lots of air on the highs and tight low end. Allen Whitman is new to me and his bass was tight and punchy with a solid performance. Mike Keneally on keyboards and Galen Henson on guitars sound just right in the mix. Joe Satriani's guitar is also clean and crisp on those solos. The surround was good, not overwhelming. The sound had a solid image in the front with the surrounds adding some more depth to the soundstage and crowd noise. Not sure how 7.1 would have sounded better over 5.1 but I enjoyed it very much.

It seems to me that this may simply be an attempt by Dolby to get a larger fraction of the BD HD audio market. All of the Region A BD's I've purchased lately have used DTS-HD for the primary soundtrack, and compressed DD for the dubbed soundtracks.

It seems to me that this may simply be an attempt by Dolby to get a larger fraction of the BD HD audio market. All of the Region A BD's I've purchased lately have used DTS-HD for the primary soundtrack, and compressed DD for the dubbed soundtracks.

Good point. I couldn't tell you the last BD I've watched with Dolby TrueHD.

How can something be upsampled? If the recording was done in 48khz then there is no more information to be given. 96khz doubles the upper frequency range past 22khz to 48khz IIRC... but if there's no information in these upper frequencies because none was recorded how can it appear with upsampling? Perhaps I am not understanding this.

Dolby THD can do 8 channels of 96/24. They seem to be trying to enhance 48 kHz soundtracks, since movie productions overwhelmingly use that sample rate.

Correct. Their media authoring software Dolby Media Producer allows a 'one-click-fix' for new or existing 48 kHz content. Also note the process uses an apodizing filter that masks unwanted digital artifacts known as preringing, developed in connection with Meridian.

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Anyway, I'm pretty disappointed in Dolby with this announcement: it seems like they've become a company of hype instead of science and engineering in their past.

Perhaps you should reserve judgement until you've heard it. I have, and it's an improvement over the same content in standard 48 kHz.

How can something be upsampled? If the recording was done in 48khz then there is no more information to be given. 96khz doubles the upper frequency range past 22khz to 48khz IIRC... but if there's no information in these upper frequencies because none was recorded how can it appear with upsampling? Perhaps I am not understanding this.

No new information is being added. Rather, certain distortions are being removed within the audible range.

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Originally Posted by AndreYew

Dolby THD can do 8 channels of 96/24. They seem to be trying to enhance 48 kHz soundtracks, since movie productions overwhelmingly use that sample rate.

Exactly.

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Anyway, I'm pretty disappointed in Dolby with this announcement: it seems like they've become a company of hype instead of science and engineering in their past.

You already can have everything in 8CH upsampled to 24/192 with the Cambridge Audio 751BD. In 2CH there already exists for years a number of upsampling players and DACs.

Modern DACs implement oversampling to 192kHz or more and some have a choice of filters. A higher sample rate input just means it is oversampled less inside the DAC. The problems of brickwall filters and ringing aren't really problems any more with modern DACs. Can you hear any in your equipment?

It's intensely controversial (at least on AVS) whether people can reliably tell between 44.1kHz and higher sample rates. This in itself implies there is no distortion or if there is any distortion it is inaudible. If distortion is such a problem then people wouldn't be buying high res contents for years!

I would rather have the choice of whether to use the upsampling player and choice of DAC myself than have content already irreversibly upsampled for me. People protest if their Blu-rays are upconverted DVDs so why is upsampled audio a good idea? Surely it is preferable to record natively at 96kHz in the first place and I only care about higher sample rates for concert and audio only discs, not background movie sound tracks.

The danger is some dishonest studios could market content as 96kHz and not tell you it's upsampled. I criticised severely and boycotted one studio for producing upsampled fake 96kHz Blu-ray audio discs precisely because of this.

Audiosceptics accept audio trials using 25 people. A recent Oxford study with over 353,000 patient records from 639 separate clinical trials shows for every 1,000 people taking diclofenac or ibuprofen there would be 3 additional heart attacks, 4 more cases of heart failure and 1 death every year.

It seems to me that this may simply be an attempt by Dolby to get a larger fraction of the BD HD audio market. All of the Region A BD's I've purchased lately have used DTS-HD for the primary soundtrack, and compressed DD for the dubbed soundtracks.

In researching this issue a little further, it does appear that DTS HD Master Audio has not only gained ground on but surpassed DD as the main format for audio on Bluray. That's somewhat of a role reversal to me because while DTS was always a cult favorite in the past, DD has always been considered the industry standard for many years. I'm surprised they let this one slip away from them. Of course, you could always argue that BD is not mainstream yet and therefore DD has not lost that much since they probably still dominate the DVD market. But, its still comes as a surprise -

In researching this issue a little further, it does appear that DTS HD Master Audio has not only gained ground on but surpassed DD as the main format for audio on Bluray. That's somewhat of a role reversal to me because while DTS was always a cult favorite in the past, DD has always been considered the industry standard for many years. I'm surprised they let this one slip away from them. Of course, you could always argue that BD is not mainstream yet and therefore DD has not lost that much since they probably still dominate the DVD market. But, its still comes as a surprise -

A lot of that came down to the tools available with authoring packages and the ease of implementation which apparently DTS had a huge advantage. One of the main selling points of this new TrueHD process is the simplicity of the new tools used to author these tracks.

You already can have everything in 8CH upsampled to 24/192 with the Cambridge Audio 751BD. In 2CH there already exists for years a number of upsampling players and DACs.

Yes. So? Do all products offer upsampling? With apodizing?

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Modern DACs implement oversampling to 192kHz or more and some have a choice of filters. A higher sample rate input just means it is oversampled less inside the DAC. The problems of brickwall filters and ringing aren't really problems any more with modern DACs. Can you hear any in your equipment?

If oversampling DACs removed the effects of anti-alias filters in the A-D, then we would not need apodizing.

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It's intensely controversial (at least on AVS) whether people can reliably tell between 44.1kHz and higher sample rates. This in itself implies there is no distortion or if there is any distortion it is inaudible.

No, it does not. It only implies some people cannot detect it. That's true of so many things in audio -- nothing new there.

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If distortion is such a problem then people wouldn't be buying high res contents for years!

If they are buying high res content, then does not that support the conclusion that sample rate does make a difference?

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People protest if their Blu-rays are upconverted DVDs so why is upsampled audio a good idea?

Because upsampling as Dolby is doing it is nothing like upconversion which uses interpolation to create "new" information. The audio bandwidth is identical after upsampling.

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Surely it is preferable to record natively at 96kHz in the first place and I only care about higher sample rates for concert and audio only discs, not background movie sound tracks.

Movies are recorded at 48 kHz, and since you do not much care about subtle aspects of movie sound quality, how can upsampling present an issue?